


light and the world's turning

by staranise



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Aftercare, BDSM, Biting and marking, Caine likes the idea of belonging to someone, Community: jakink, F/M, aftermath of painplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-25
Updated: 2015-02-25
Packaged: 2018-03-15 06:03:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3436205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staranise/pseuds/staranise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: <em>Caine expected the sex and to do what he's told and to like it. He didn't expect to be taken care of and cuddled and thanked afterwards too.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	light and the world's turning

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Jupiter Ascending kinkmeme [here](http://jakink.dreamwidth.org/724.html?thread=39636#cmt39636) in response to the prompt, "Jupiter/Caine, aftercare"

Caine doesn't even pull his hands out of the restraints after she's unbuckled them.  His arms go slack and they ride up a little, nudging at the base of his thumb and the top of his foot, but he stays, his heart still thudding and the sweat cooling on his skin.  It still all echoes through him, rings on rings, the tight press of the cuffs and the wrists that can still feel them, and the wet fabric and leather that arms and legs that still remember are lying on, like the memory of Jupiter's mouth and hands and the stinging of the skin once she's taken them away.

A part of him still tries to rise up and flee, absolutely terrified of the broken pleading thing he was; but no, that's just his gorge, just bile he has to swallow and force down, because this broken thing is safe here, free to lie in pieces until something happens--time turns--the dawn light filtering between tall buildings turns into solid day, or even longer--until his queen needs something from him again, until he gets hungry, until Stinger calls with a question.  Until life fills him in again.  This bed is his, and for as long as he's willing to lay there, it belongs to him.  Jupiter showed him the lease, her hands tapping it against a counter, her smile brimming with uncertainty and pride.   _It's yours.  It has a balcony._   Paper means the same to her that scars and surgeries do to him, permanence and ownership, and the paper for apartment 2307 says  _Caine Wise_.

A good, and a wise, and a benevolent queen, the broken thing on apartment 2307's bed thinks, and considers the safety of sleep; and Jupiter comes out of the bathroom, her hair let loose from its ponytail and falling soft around her face.  She’s wrapped herself in a dressing gown and pulls a water bottle out from underneath her arm with a fond smile, then passes it down to him.  Caine takes it, his fingers slowly going to unstop the lid at the top; his eyes follow her around the bed automatically, even when he has to look over the top of his head to do it.  She leaves a few bottles in the shelf above him, then sits next to him.  The thing in her hand is a washcloth, run under hot water but quickly cooling; she puts her hand just above his ticklish side to hold him still as she gently washes away sweat and blood and saliva and semen.  After that she dries him with something like terrycloth, or softer, and drops a kiss against the gouge that stings the most.

When she looks up at him and flicks a finger, eyebrows raised, he obediently puts the bottle to his lips and unstops it with his teeth, lifting himself on one elbow when drinking proves difficult flat on his back.  She putters, flicking the restraints off the mattress and pulling bedding down from a shelf, and with another motion of her hand gets him to scoot back until his toes no longer brush the edge of the bed.  With a flick of her wrists she snaps a sheet open and sends it cascading over the bed; it settles on him, feather-light, before she does the same with a comforter and tucks them both into the foot of the bed.  She smiles at him while she flips the corners of the bed into creases her hands know without looking, so he smiles back and drinks water, again; then she folds the top of the blanket and the sheet down, something she gestures for him to do on his own side, tosses him a pair of pillows, and slips back into bed.  The first thing she does then is retrieve her own water bottle from the shelf, along with a dermal replacement spray.  Caine leans back on the pillow he’s kept for himself, bemused.

Jupiter looks satisfied and happy, and a very little tired, but it's the sweet relaxation after satisfying work.  She stretches her whole body like a bow held taut, then lets it go with a sigh, and one of her hands settles on the side of Caine’s face, her arm along his throat, her elbow against his breastbone.  Her smile is entirely made of sweetness as she drifts her fingers across his cheekbones and temple and eyelashes.  When it deepens she bites her lip on a giddy, avaricious grin.

“Thank you,” she confides, her face tilting in to where Caine’s has automatically lowered out of deference.  She slides her hand down with the grain of his beard, rubbing his face in small and gentle strokes.  He isn’t entirely sure what she’s thanking him for; he helped very little with the bed.  “You were—” she says, and her breath seems to catch in her chest.

_A small, obedient, broken thing_.  He was, he thinks, he knows; he feels exactly in his skin what he was for Jupiter in bed.  The better-treated version of what he’s been before.  What he’s been as a soldier he’s also been for love, which is what a lycantan who wants to survive calls sordid, frenzied  matings where he holds still past the shudders so he can pretend he belongs to somebody else for a while.

“So good,” she whispers, and drops a kiss onto his lips.  He’s too frozen to respond before those gentle lips are gone; Caine blinks, as though letting those words in is an act like letting a flake of snow melt onto his eyelashes.  It takes a minute before the pressure and fleck of cold transform.  He huffs a breath out.  She leans close, hand combing through the hair behind his ear, and kisses his cheekbone and eyebrow.  “You were so good for me, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” he breathes into her hair.  He’s learned to answer her questions, and this one begs the answer.  It’s true.  He was, he did; he obeyed every order, submitted himself to everything.  He makes space for her automatically, shoving his water bottle aside and leaning his head into the irresistible touch of her hands on his hair.  Her waist swims into his grasp as she leans over him and lights the dawn with her smile.

“God, you’re beautiful,” she says fondly, something more applicable to her than to him; but she touches his face and kisses him again, slowly, and murmurs, “my Caine,” before she has to break the kiss because of the width of her smile.  

She insists on healing the skin of the one bite that broke through on his shoulder, fanatical about bacteria; the nail scratches he persuades her to let him keep.  They look like intimate damage, something only someone with time and close access to his undefended body could inflict; they look like belonging.  They look like someone laid hands on him and called him hers.

_I think she really means it_  is a thought that arrives slowly with the settling of her body next to his, their curling together on sheets with drying sweat which she neither disdains nor has ordered him to clean.  She doesn’t want sex again, she sleepily clarifies; she yawns into his shoulder, where he can bury his nose in the sweetness of her hair.  His queen wants to sleep twined together, like a heap of exhausted children; like, it can’t help but occur to him, like  _puppies_ , as she lolls against him, limp and heavy.  Not like any lovers he’s ever had—Stinger and the Skyjackers the closest, the unit sleeping in transit with legs and wings draped wherever they would fit.

They wind together like helixes, like destiny, like pack; they interlace like fingers and a pillow full of hair.  He lies beaten and bruised, well-cared for, carefully bandaged and covered with fresh sheets.  She sleeps in his arms in his apartment, confident of the property she owns.

It occurs to him that the word for what he is is  _loved_ , and with Jupiter in his arms he lets the magnificent terror of that new updraft carry him into morning.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] light and the world's turning](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3583053) by [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins), [staranise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/staranise/pseuds/staranise)
  * [Light and the World's Turning (Podfic)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5758201) by [auroreanrave](https://archiveofourown.org/users/auroreanrave/pseuds/auroreanrave), [staranise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/staranise/pseuds/staranise)




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